Why does one query work and the other does not ?

 I have a query that was throwing and ORA-00936 but we changed the order of the select columns and the query worked.

This is on Windows Server 2003 Oracle 11g.

This query fails :

Select a.col1, b.col1, c.col1

from table1 a, table2 c, table3b;

This one works :

Select a.col1, b.col1, c.col1

from table1 a, table3 b, table2 c;

Does the order in the from need to match the order in the select ?

Thanks

Jeff